Associate a run with the ID of a record in a different system
When a run corresponds to a record in another system, a ticket, a deal, an order, a case, store that record's ID on the run. It is what lets the two systems talk about the same thing.
Set it by hand
The field is called External ID. Set it when you create the run, under Optional Settings, or afterwards from the run's settings.
Set it automatically
The more useful case is not typing it at all. When another system creates the run, through Zapier or the API, it can set the External ID at the same time, so the link is made without anyone remembering to do it.
That is the pattern worth building: your CRM creates the onboarding run and stamps the deal ID on it. See Does Manifestly integrate with other services? and The Manifestly API.
What it buys you
- Finding the run from the other system. Given a deal ID, you can locate its run without matching on names that may have been typed differently.
- Updating the right run. An integration that needs to act on a run can address it by the ID it already knows.
- Reporting across systems, joining run data to records elsewhere.
A note on discipline
An external ID is only useful if it is set consistently. One populated on half the runs is worse than none, because queries against it quietly return partial answers. If you are going to use it, set it automatically at creation rather than relying on people to fill it in.